One minute you’re watching Villa going toe to toe with Paris St-Germain, the next, you’re struggling to remember the last meaningful chance we created. It’s been a decidedly frustrating start to the 2025/26 campaign for Unai Emery, with no goals and just two points on the board.
After a fortunate draw away at Everton (0-0) at the weekend, Villa head to Brentford in the third round of the EFL Cup. This blog has and continues to firmly believe we should be taking the domestic cup(s) seriously, not least because it is Villa’s most realistic chance of silverware, but also given the fact that our last major trophy was in 1996. We need to win something.
Hopefully, we take this fixture seriously. It’s a chance to ignite a lacklustre start to the season, a ‘free-hit’ to play more expansively and an opportunity to blood the new arrivals. With these fixtures comes risk, injury, distraction, but a tame early exit from a winnable competition would do nothing to lift spirits.
The facts are that Villa and Emery have more than enough in the squad to overcome Brentford, but as a collective we simply haven’t delivered. Some might point to the 1-0 defeat already inflicted by ours hosts in August, and whilst the first half was far from vintage Villa, the second was a much more promising display (albeit fruitless).
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However, we must address the issues that are staring us in the face. Individual players have to step up and play to the standard that we’ve observed. Too many are, for whatever reason, nowhere near the levels previously achieved. For balance, this must be extended to Emery too. Our tactical approach, team selection and style of play have been the most confused and ineffective since his arrival at the football club.
This can be rectified, and it must, starting with a victory on Tuesday evening. Anything else does little other than platform utter nonsense (somehow given airtime) that we are in some way reliving the Paul Lambert nightmare. We are nowhere, and I mean nowhere, near the chronic lows of that era.
Kick Off: 8pm (GMT)
Prediction: Brentford 0-2 Villa
Injury News: Tielemans, Kamara and Onana are all out.
Watch on TV: Sky Sports Main Event (UK)
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